1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method of electronic commerce (“e-commerce”), and more particularly to a system and method for bringing an electronic shopping experience closer to a “normal” (e.g., traditional) shopping experience by defining an “electronic store assistant” (hereafter, an “e-Store assistant”) which helps electronic shoppers who are “lost” while browsing for an item (e.g., a product or service) in an electronic commerce (e-commerce) site.
2. Description of the Related Art
As increasing numbers of people use computers for shopping through e-commerce stores, these stores would be expected to allow the users to provide facilities that bring them closer to a normal shopping experience. However, this has not been the case.
Presently, the conventional systems merely provide electronic shopping carts where the user adds purchased items, and express check-outs where the user may leave the e-commerce site at the earliest time if the orders are small and fixed.
However, there are few other features which bring the electronic shopping experience closer to a normal, traditional shopping experience. Indeed, there has not been provided (nor the advantages recognized) of allowing an e-store assistant to help a user who is lost while shopping.
Typical e-stores have shopping aisles which are basically categories. These categories are further divided up into subcategories and so on. However, the names of the categories may not be exactly representative of all the items that are found in each category. This is a problem and leads to inefficiency and frustration for the user.
For instance, there may be a category that indicates “Baking Needs” and another category that indicates “Tea and Coffee”. The user who is looking for “Brown Sugar” may wander into the wrong category without knowing which of these areas should (or is) actually be carrying “Brown Sugar”. Further, the user might be looking for “Glucose powder” which could be in any of these categories, or may be in a totally different category (e.g., “Health Foods”).
Another problem is that the user may not have an exact description of the product. This may cause the user to go to each aisle that the user thinks is related to it and try to search for it. This is very inefficient for the user.
For instance, the user might be looking for a light bulb that will fit a particular electrical fitting. If the user is shopping in a specialized electrical store, the user might go into different categories of electrical fittings, and appliances, and type in words like “bulb”, “halogen”, and so on. However, there is no guarantee that the user will be able to find the item.
Further, it is noted that the Microsoft Word® program has the notion of a static assistant which keeps track of the input typed in a Word document and provides tips. However, this does not work in an e-commerce environment. Along these lines, it is noted that most e-commerce sites have “Help” facilities, but do not provide a dynamic shopping assistant. Any “help” is provided in a static, predetermined manner.
Thus, hitherto the present invention, there has been no feature to help the user to efficiently find the item (e.g., product or service) desired by the user. As a result, an inefficient shopping session results. That is, prior to the present invention, there have been few facilities for bringing electronic shopping experience closer to a normal shopping experience, and none which have allowed an e-store assistant to help a user who is lost while shopping.